Hydrogen plays a central role in several reliability-related phenomena in electronic devices. Here, we review an extensive set of first-principles calculations on H effects in Si-based devices. The results provide a framework for the explanation of the physical processes responsible for bias-temperature instability (BTI). We also examine new results on the dissociation reaction of a Si-H bond at t...
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Negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) and channel hot carrier (CHC) are the leading reliability concerns for nanoscale transistors. The de facto modeling method to analyze CHC is based on substrate current Isub, which becomes increasingly problematic with technology scaling as various leakage components dominate Isub. In this paper, we present a unified approach that d...
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Negative bias-temperature (NBT) stress-induced drain current instability in a pMOSFET with a gate stack is investigated by using a fast transient measurement technique. We find that in certain stress conditions, the NBT-induced current instability evolves from enhancement mode to degradation mode, giving rise to an anomalous turn-around characteristic with stress time and stress gate voltage. Pers...
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It is now well established that the negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) mechanism alters both the mean and variance of the distribution of the PFET under stress. This effect has reliability implications to balanced analog circuits (e.g., current mirrors, differential pairs, etc.), as well as to SRAM cell stability. This paper presents a brief review of the understanding and models to date...
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Three fast measuring methods, namely, "on-the-fly," fast direct threshold-voltage (VT) determination, and fast drain-current measurement near VT, are compared. Problems of the different methods are thoroughly discussed, and an analysis of systematic and statistical errors has been done. An example comparing the VT data extracted from the three methods is given. The...
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This paper examines the atomic-scale defects involved in a metal-oxide-silicon field-effect-transistor reliability problem called the negative-bias temperature instability (NBTI). NBTI has become the most important reliability problem in modern complementary-metal-oxide-silicon technology. Despite 40 years of research, the defects involved in this instability were undetermined prior to this paper....
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A practical and accurate design-in-reliability methodology has been developed for designs on 90-65-nm technology nodes to quantitatively assess the degradation due to hot carrier and negative bias temperature instability. Simulation capability has been built on top of an existing analog simulator ELDO. Circuits are analyzed using this methodology, illustrating the capabilities of the methodology a...
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This paper deals with the experimental characterization of modern semiconductor devices under realistic operational conditions. First, a method for monitoring their thermal evolution as a response to transient electrical stimuli is presented. The proposed solution belongs in the category of optical infrared methods and offers good time and space resolution. In line with the requirements of leading...
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Reliability issues have been traditionally considered only for functional yield problems. Among them, the progressive gate-oxide soft breakdown (SBD) in the negative-channel field-effect transistors is foreseen to be a big issue for the deep-deep submicron technologies, where ultrathin gate oxide and low supply (stress) voltage will be massively deployed. Device-level investigation has largely con...
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The reliability of memory systems that are exposed to soft errors has been studied in the past with the aim of deriving the mean time to failure (MTTF) and the probability of failing in a given time interval. On those studies, the soft errors were considered to arrive following a Poissonian basis and they were assumed to be single uncorrelated events (each event causes only one soft error). Recent...
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In this paper, electrical and reliability properties of ultrathin silicon dioxide, grown by immersing silicon in nitric acid solution have been studied. It is observed that the temperature, oxidation time, and concentration of the nitric acid solution play important roles in determining the thickness as well as the quality of the oxide. Prolonged exposure to nitric acid degrades the quality of the...
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In this paper, the physical and electrical characteristics of low-temperature-processing hafnium oxide (HfO2) films are studied. A simple cost-effective room-temperature process was introduced to prepare high-k HfO2 dielectrics. A novel technique of direct oxidation of an ultrathin Hf metal by nitric acid, followed by rapid thermal annealing in N2 is demonstrated. ...
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This paper presents a study of the well-known optical beam-induced current (OBIC) technique applied to electrostatic-discharge defect localization. The OBIC technique is improved by using a pulsed laser beam instead of a continuous one. Critical parameters of the experimentation are explored in this paper. We particularly discuss on the influence of the laser energy, the bias of the device under t...
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Aims & Scope

IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability is published quarterly. It provides leading edge information that is critical to the creation of reliable electronic devices and materials, and a focus for interdisciplinary communication in the state of the art of reliability of electronic devices, and the materials used in their manufacture. It focuses on the reliability of electronic, optical, and magnetic devices, and microsystems; the materials and processes used in the manufacture of these devices; and the interfaces and surfaces of these materials.